Ahead: Six Decades of Humiliation

by Ted Rall

NEW YORK--The world hates us more than ever, according to a new Pew Research poll of 16,000 citizens in 15 countries. Most Canadians think Americans are exceptionally rude. The Chinese say we're violent and greedy. Nearly half of Turks--up from 32 percent a year ago--say they dislike Americans as individuals and America as a nation, according to the survey. Muslims have a "quite negative hostility toward America," says Pew president Andrew Kohut. Even among our traditional allies, he says, the United States "remains broadly disliked."

The reason for our declining popularity is no mystery: Bush's unjustified, illegal war against Iraq. But Iraq, Bush's doctrine of preemptive warfare and instances of prisoners being tortured and even murdered aren't completely unprecedented. Cheney's neoconservatives are merely the latest executors of an aggressive foreign policy that has long prompted fear, hatred and resentment among the leaders and citizens of other nations. Beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's brutal suppression of Filipino insurgents at the dawn of the 20^th century, continuing with the holocaust of two million Vietnamese civilians under LBJ and Nixon's carpet bombs and recently exemplified by a series of bullying adventures against such defenseless nations as Grenada, Panama and Afghanistan, the U.S. has become, perhaps to its surprise, the biggest danger to peace and stability on the planet.